David Gauntlett, who coined media studies 2.0, has moved far beyond old school thinking about media. His forthcoming book, Making is Connecting, looks like it has great potential for bridging media education with sustainability. Why? The primary axiom of sustainability is “everything is connected to everything else,” with the caveat that not all things are connected equally. I recently enjoyed reading Gauntlett’s book, Creative Explorations: New Approaches to Identities and Audiences, which explores the use of Lego building for understanding identity creation.

Based on the snippets from his Website and this video, my impression is that he’s on track to combine three essential skills I see necessary for a sustainable world: putting things together (material and immaterial) in a socially context that engages the world. I don’t know if Gauntlett is an old punk, but this sure reminds my of what DIY was/is all about. Though he’s active in Web 2.0 tools, Gauntlett also is interested in guerrilla gardening, knitting, crafting and home electronics. He gets bonus points for drawing on the work of Ivan Illych.

I just came across this excellent mind map of the “all things open and free” from Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation. Truly amazing.

Via collectivate.net.

Thanks DK!

This latest talk is a simplification of previous themes that Wesch has dealt with in his Digital Ethnography program at Kansas State. His An anthropological Introduction to YouTube is absolutely required viewing.

This overview, from Wesch’s keynote presentation from Personal Democracy Forum 2009, includes choice keyphrases like “context collapse,” “the freedom to experience humanity without fear of anxiety,” “free hugs,” “most pubic space on the planet,” and “they speak video.”

PS When will this guy write a book?

PPS: Here is a bonus video from the same conference featuring danah boyd…

A Webliography is an interesting idea: annotate a book with hyperlinks and whatnot. Thankfully someone took the time to do just that for Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Follow this link for an amazing list of online references.

Want to annotate any Web page on the Internet? And see other’s comments? Reframeit!, a browser plugin, does the trick. Now let’s see if too much commenting democracy will lead to a hoard of trolls taking over the commons, or if it will reveal intelligent collective wisdom.

From high tech to low tech, Scott McLoud (Understanding Comics) penned for google a fascinating comic-style tour of Chrome’s development. Damn those google guys are smart!

Technorati Tags: Chrome

Michael Wesch has created some of my favorite YouTube videos about the current technology zeitgeist. The Chronicle of Higher Education did this pretty cool article and video (posted above).

I thoughtful and interesting treatise on how we read online (and tips for (not) blogging too!).

How we read online. – By Michael Agger – Slate Magazine:

You’re probably going to read this.

It’s a short paragraph at the top of the page. It’s surrounded by white space. It’s in small type.

To really get your attention, I should write like this:

* Bulleted list

* Occasional use of bold to prevent skimming

* Short sentence fragments

* Explanatory subheads

* No puns

* Did I mention lists?

What Is This Article About?

For the past month, I’ve been away from the computer screen. Now I’m back reading on it many hours a day. Which got me thinking: How do we read online?